Barthélémy Toguo

Celebrations

This catalogue, was published to accompany Barthélémy Toguo's first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition, which took place in May 2014, used the title of an immersive installation in which small drawings are displayed atop 35 music stands. Toguo wrote:

[I]t is a concert of 'Celebrations' of life with all its feelings: beauty stands alongside ugliness, pleasure amidst war, sexuality with violence, joy and death.

The artist's 'theatre of the world' embraces everything that makes up human existence; life and death live side by side and give meaning to one another.

Toguo's many experiences with border control have led him to interrogate ideas of inclusion and exclusion in his work. The New World Climax comprises large wooden stamps resembling those used to stamp his passport which he then used to make prints on paper, a series of which are included in the catalogue. The literal weight of the sculptures exemplifies the heavy burden for immigrants of being in a constant state of transition. The work highlights the difficulty of travelling for people forced into exile as well as those who long for change and the experience of something beyond their own borders. Transgression of borders both physical and mental is a persistent theme in his drawings and installations.